But the best thing about the whole morning was your guide Deborah. She is charming, friendly, erudite, and a real credit to you. We listened to her intently throughout, she held our attention, surprised us, interacted with us, answered all our questions, and made the morning very special. We would have missed so much without her. We all think we would like to meet her again and when we come back to Rome we would hope to do so.

The Tomb of Cecilia Metella is one of the nine Rome museums / archaeological
sites that may be visited using the Rome Archaeological pass. Below
is some background information.

The Tomb of Cecilia Metella was built between 50BC and 40BC for the
daughter-in-law of Crassus, the richest man in Rome. Nothing is now
known about Cecilia, and Lord Byron, inspired by the romance of the
site, was to fantasise about this unknown woman in his epic Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Crassus had a dramatic career and one with a grisly end. He got his
wealth from the slave trade, silver mines and property, and was the
Roman general who crushed the Spartacus slave rebellion. Elected Consul
with Pompey in 70BC, he entertained the Roman people at a banquet with
10,000 tables and distributed enough corn to last each family for three
months.

In 60BC he formed the First Triumvirate with Pompey and Julius Caesar,
which ended democracy in Rome, and in 55BC was given control of Syria … a
source of limitless wealth. But the plutocrat general was to meet an
ironic end. Captured by the Parthian leader, he was killed by having
molten gold poured down his throat.

We know that Crassus’s eldest son was a successful (and thus
very rich) general, inheriting vast wealth and marrying Cecilia Metella,
the daughter of the Consul Creticus. She may have died young but the
irony is that while Cecilia’s story may be lost, her tomb is
the finest surviving Roman monument on the Appian Way.

Unlike the very ruined ruins of the Forum, the Tomb of Cecilia Metella
is recognizably a building (though some details are later editions).
The marble facing is near-intact and there are elegant friezes topped
by garlands and the heads of oxen. The crenellations were added in
the Middle Ages when the tomb became a fortified tollbooth. It was
a gift from Pope Boniface VIII to his family (the Caetani) in 1302,
allowing them to charge tolls on the heavy traffic between Rome and
the independent state of Naples.

The Caetani’s coat of arms still hangs here, and they added
pinnacles and built a palace. Now the fortified tomb became a hamlet,
including the church of San Nicola di Bari). The fortress was attacked
and damaged a number of times and eventually became a refuge for brigands.

A few centuries on and Lord Byron was inspired by his visits to Classical
Rome, writing Cecilia a central role in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
He ponders her destiny while describing this ‘Stern round tower
of other days’. That tireless journalist Charles Dickens visited
the site in 1845, writing ‘Here was Rome indeed at last; and
such a Rome as no one can imagine in its full and awful grandeur’.
And that great British proto-Impressionist JMW Turner painted the Tomb
of Cecilia Metella, Rome in 1830. Today it hangs in London’s
Tate Britain museum.

Please follow the links
below to purchase your Rome Passes (the reduced price pass is only
available to EU residents aged between 18 and 25), and click
here for the main information page for the Rome Archaeological Pass.